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1996 Day of Contrition:
Protesting modern-day witch hunts

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The witch hunts in Salem and other New England towns in the early 1690's
are a dark stain on the history of North America. Some 19 innocent people
were hung in Salem because they would not confess that they were Witches, and one
person was pressed to death because he would not issue a plea. 11 were
hung in Connecticut. About 5 years later, people in the Salem area were profoundly
distressed at the terrible miscarriage of justice that had taken place in their
colony. They took part in an official day of fasting and remorse.

From the early 1980's to the present time, a similar witch hunt has taken
place: people have been accused, charged, tried and convicted of ritual
and/or sexual abuse of children, based on unreliable evidence derived from:

Hundreds of innocent people were thrown in jail for crimes that they did
not commit. It would appear that, with the possible exception of one case in Florida, none of the events for
which they were charged actually happened. Their cases have been reviewed, and most or all have been released from prison. Sometimes they
had spent 12 or more years in jail.

A new "Day of Contrition" was organized in Salem MA on the
300th anniversary of the original day, 1996-JAN-14. The press release of
the organizers, The Justice Committee, follows:

JUSTICE COMMITTEE
Carol Lamb Hopkins, Executive Director

PROTESTING MODERN WITCH HUNTS ON 300TH ANNIVERSARY OF MASSACHUSETTS "DAY OF CONTRITION."

SALEM CONFERENCE WILL CHALLENGE TODAY'S PLAGUE OF INJUSTICE As the widely acclaimed film adaptation of Arthur Miller's The
Crucible opens across the country, some 300 writers, scholars,
scientists, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and concerned citizens,
joined by individuals recently freed from wrongful imprisonment, will
gather early next week in Salem, Massachusetts, for the first-ever
national convocation on contemporary witch hunts.
The day-long event will address the reasons and remedies for the
nationwide epidemic of spurious accusations and prosecutions; those
based on testimony forced from children by flawed interviewing
techniques in sexual abuse investigations, therapeutically created
recovered memories of supposed childhood incest, and those based on
false confessions extracted by police interrogators.
On January 14, 1697, five years after the famous "witchcraft trials," the entire community of His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts
Bay, in obedience to a proclamation, took part in a day of fasting and
remorse.
It was a rare and historic acknowledgment of the hysteria and judicial
errors that had led to "great hardship brought upon innocent persons" --- including the 19 put to death.

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1997 DAY OF CONTRITION

One year after the 300th anniversary, in January 14, 1997, in an auditorium at Salem's Essex-Peabody Museum,
the far more extensive parallels of the injustices of three centuries
ago were examined by a powerful lineup of experts on miscarriages
of justice. They described the modern forms of "spectral
evidence" used to condemn and incarcerate thousands of citizens for
crimes they did not commit.

Videotaped commentaries by playwright Arthur Miller and author William
Styron - prepared especially for the convocation, will set the stage
for presentations by such figures as:

John Putnam Demos, Yale University history professor and descendent
of Salem accuser Ann Putnam.

Alan Rubenstein. The District Attorney from a county in Pennsylvania, and
author of the 1990 report dealing with his investigation into false allegations of ritual abuse at a local day school.

Elizabeth Loftus, University of Washington memory researcher and
co-author of The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and
Allegations Sexual Abuse.

Debbie Nathan, journalist, co-author of Satan's Silence: Ritual
Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt.

Paul Noel Chretien, Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice.

Frederick Crews, University of California, Berkeley, Professor of
English, historian of psychoanalysis; principal author of The Memory Wars.

Pamela Freyd, University of Pennsylvania researcher, founder of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Donald Connery, former Time-Life correspondent; author of Guilty
Until Proven Innocent and editor of Convicting the Innocent.

Cheryl and Violet Amirault, mother and daughter convicted in the
Massachusetts' Fells Acres Case. Their convictions were overturned
after 14 years imprisonment.

Bobby Finje: a youth, aged 14 at the time, who was tried
for ritual abuse by Dade County, Florida . The prosecutor, Janet Reno, later
became the
U.S. Attorney General, He was held without bail for over a year before his
acquittal.

Pastor and Mrs. Roby Roberson, who were separated for years from their child,
then tried and acquitted in the Wenatchee Washington "sex ring"
scandal of false accusations.

Brenda and Scott Kniffen, sentenced to 240 years each in the Kern
County, CA sex ring cases; Their convictions were later overturned.

"The analogy to Salem is by no means overstated." said Carol Hopkins, the
principal convocation organizer and executive director of The Justice
Committee in San Diego [CA]. "The witchcraft mentality is still
with us" in the forced accusations and confessions and as we see
hundreds of men and women languishing behind bars for such imagined crimes as
torturing and sacrificing babies during Satanic rituals. Our message
is "Enough"."These prosecutions must end and, just as importantly, we must release
the falsely convicted and make reparations to them. The convocation
will again echo the Justice Committee's demand for Congressional
hearings into these cases."

The January 14 conference, not open to the public, was held at
the Essex-Peabody Museum, beginning at 8:30 a.m. On the previous day
starting at 1 p.m., two forums of experts discussed social science
issues and legal and legislative remedies. On the night of the 13th attendees walked by candlelight to Salem's memorial to
the witch trials victims. They held a vigil for today's prisoners of
hysteria and reckless prosecution. The public was welcome to join in the
vigil.